


The Idiot Plot

by mayfriend



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crack, Do-Over, F/M, Gen, Stand Alone Chapters, oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 18:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13507419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: The Idiot Plot, of course, is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot.Chapter One: James and Lily choose a secret keeper.Chapter Two: Fred and George notice their brother is being stalked by an invisible man.





	1. The Secret Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter lengths will vary wildly, mostly due to how much explanation I feel is needed to correct the character's dumbass moments. One chapter may be several thousand words (okay, probably not, but I'm being optimistic) and another may only be a couple hundred.

James watches Dumbledore’s retreating back as the elder wizard walked down the Potter’s garden path through the kitchen window, the Headmaster acting as if he had just paid them nothing more than a social visit. Only when he is sure that the old man is really, truly gone does he allow his shoulders to bleed out with tension, and presses a fist to his forehead.

Warm, familiar arms wrap themselves around him from the back, and Lily’s round stomach brushed his spine. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” James chokes out, “That- that our boy…”

“He wouldn’t lie about something like this,” Lily says quietly. 

“So… the Fidelius? Like Albus suggested?” James turns around to face his wife, and sees that there are tears spilling silently down her face, like autumn rain. He reaches out to wipe them away, and she leans into his palm until he is cupping her cheek. 

“It’s strong enough to keep him out,” his wife says with a wobbly smile, “ _ Fidelius  _ is the strongest warding spell there is, but what we’d  _ sacrifice _ , James… we couldn’t go out of the house’s boundaries. We couldn’t even get our own shopping. And our baby-” her hands go to her middle, tenderly resting on top of her bump, “his life… who knows how long this war can last, James? How many years would the three of us have to live in this house, like ghosts, never going out for fear of being forced to give the others up? He couldn’t go to school, couldn’t have playdates, could never even leave the house-”

“What choice do we have?” James says, running his hands through his hair roughly, “I’d rather he grows up isolated than him never growing up at all.” Even saying the words makes something in James’ throat contract roughly. Lily lets out a small sob against her will. Automatically, James reaches out and pulls her into a hug. “It’ll be fine, you’ll see, Lily. We’ll have Sirius as our secret keeper- I know he’d never betray us, never, and Dumbledore too if that fails-”

Lily pulls back, frowning. “James, I didn’t say no to Albus’ offer because I thought  _ Sirius  _ would be a better choice,” she says slowly, as if talking to a very small child who hasn’t yet grasped simple addition but who wants to try out long division nevertheless, “I said no because it would be stupid to make anyone other than me or you the secret keeper. No matter how much you trust Sirius, we cannot risk him being tortured, or his mind read. Plus, there is a spy in the order-”

“You don’t seriously think that-”

“No, of course I don’t but I  _ will not  _ take unnecessary risks when it comes to keeping our son safe. Me and you will be here, together - we’ll keep our own Secret. If we never leave, then no one has the chance to force us to give it up.”

And well, when she says it like that, his idea does sound rather stupid.

“I did marry you for your brains,” James reflects, and Lily rolls her eyes before smiling. And James knows in that instant, he will stay in seclusion for the rest of his life if he has to, if it will keep her and their child safe. And it will, he swears to himself. It  _ will. _


	2. The Marauder's Map

“Fred,” George says, frowning from his bed, “c’mere for a second?”

His voice is devoid of it’s usual mirth, and so his twin pads over to his brother’s side without a fuss. “What is it?” The first year asks as he spots a familiar piece of parchment in the other boy’s hand. “If it’s another rendezvous then I really don’t want to know, I’m still scarred from the last time-”

“Percy-” But that’s as far as George gets before the map is ripped from his hands.

 _"Really?”_ Fred’s eyes run, frenzied, across the paper, looking for their older brother’s name. He finds him in his dormitory, but surrounded by four other boys as usual. He glares at his brother. “You let me get all excited then,” he says grumpily, before perking up, “it’s not like, a _group_ thing is it-”

“Oh my god, _no.”_ George says with a shudder. “I just- I was thinking. _(_ _Could be dangerous,_ their third roommate and best friend, Lee Jordan mutters, unheard, from across the room) We’ve never known the map to be wrong, have we?”

It should be said here that the Weasley twins had only liberated the map from Filch’s office four months before, and only figured out how to work it five weeks ago. In that time they had already set up eleven truly spectacular pranks, nine of which worked perfectly, one of which was a flop, and the last of which had been set off too early (to hilarious results). They had not yet been caught for any of them, although every teacher suspected them, and that was thanks to the map. While one of the identical boys set up the tricks, the other would keep an eye on both the door and the map, knowing when to run and who exactly was near.

Whatever else could be said of them, Fred or George Weasley were very, very clever.

“Just- just count his roomies, yeah?”

Letting out a dramatic sigh, Fred did just that. Then blinked. Then counted again.

“...there’s five people.”

“Yep.”

“But- but Percy only has three roommates.”

The twins exchanged a look. A look that you or I would think was one part crazy, two parts confused, and three parts indecipherable. But Fred and George knew each other better than they knew themselves, and they knew exactly what the other was thinking: how could there be _five_ people in Percy’s dorm when there were only _four_ Gryffindor boys in their old brother’s year? It was far past curfew, so everyone should have been in their beds. And knowing Percy, their older brother would throw a fit if someone was breaking the rules. But the tower was silent (as it _should_ be, Lee Jordan thought to himself again, rather bitterly. He loved the twins, he did. But it was _two in the morning_ , and he was outvoted on turning the lights off, because he would always lose in a three person dorm where the other two people were sort-of one person.)

 _Percy Weasley_ was, of course, in his bed like a good little suck up. _Oliver Wood_ was opposite to him, and next to them were the other two third year boys: _Timothy FitzPatrick_ and _Miles Young_ . But there was one more name, written just as clearly as the others, slotted in-between Percy and Timothy’s beds: _Peter Pettigrew._

Fred had never heard of a Peter Pettigrew before, and he made a point of knowing people, because you never knew when you needed to prank someone, or _not_ prank someone (even Fred and George knew, for example, not to prank someone who had an acute phobia. They learned that one the hard way with their youngest brother, Ron, who they had unintentionally rendered arachnophobic due to early childhood trauma. Needless to say, he did _not_ react well when anything even mildly resembling an eight-legged insect was anywhere near him, even if _they were just_ buttons _, mum_ ).

But anyway, they knew everyone, pretty much. And neither of them knew this Peter Pettigrew.

The suspicion grows from there. They dedicate more and more time to following this Pettigrew, but find that he’s a ghost. Or even better than a ghost, because ghosts at least show up on the map in pale, shiny writing, and produce silvery projections of themselves in the real world. Peter Pettigrew was just… nothing. Percy could be walking down a hallway, alone on both sides, but the map would insist a Peter Pettigrew was keeping pace with him exactly.  

Instead of say, reporting this to a teacher or even just talking to Percy, like any normal pair of eleven year olds would, Fred and George decided to figure out the mystery of Peter Pettigrew themselves. Week after week, he attended Percy’s classes consistently, but he was on none of the registers. He went to lunch, sitting next to Percy, even when the prat was sitting alone. One time, when they had grown frustrated beyond measure, the twins had burst into the third year dorms at midnight, ready to catch Peter Pettigrew sleeping on the floor, but instead just met their irate brother and got a week’s worth of detention for their troubles.

(It should be noted that in this period of less-and-less activity from the twins, the professors - and of course the professors knew those eleven pranks were them, they just couldn’t seem to _catch_ the two brothers anymore - because very, very worried. For themselves, mostly, because they assumed that the troublemakers were cooking up a prank of truly epic proportions. In retrospect, they wished they had been right.)

The pattern changes three months after they first notice Peter Pettigrew, the boy-that-wasn’t. Pettigrew doesn’t go to class, he stays behind in the boy’s dorm. The twins, noticing this in their first period of History of Magic, exchange yet another look, this one easier to read than others - this look was filled with expectant glee. Binns doesn’t even notice them sneaking out.

But the fifth year dorm is empty. Completely and utterly deserted.

“The map’s faulty,” George says to his brother, flopping down on what is clearly Percy’s bed, considering that it is the only one that’s been made, “it has to be. This Pettigrew guy does not exist-”

Something squeaks beneath the covers and moves beneath him frantically, and he rolls over halfway to see Scabbers, Percy’s pet rat, squirming out from underneath him and making a break for the door. Fred, who is still standing, barely makes it to the door in time to close it. “Close one,” he says with a sigh of relief, “Percy would go spare if you went missing, Scabbers.”

He bends down to pick up the rodent, which is scratching ineffectively at the door, before recoiling sharply. “He bit me!” He says, outraged, holding up his bleeding finger for inspection. George frowns. Looks at his brother’s finger, looks at the rat scrabbling at the door still, and then looks at the map.

Realises.

Quick as a flash, he’s picked up an empty glass from Oliver Wood’s beside table, eyes trained on the pet. Fred, for once not aware of his brother’s intentions, looks at him confusedly as he creeps forward, sucking on his injured digit. It must be the silence that tips off Scabbers at the last moment. Because Scabbers had been living with Weasley family for eight or nine years at that point, and something he learned very early on was that twins were _never_ silent.

He launches away from the door as George's glass slams over where he was moments before, and scurries under a bed. The next few moments were a mass of confusion, with George yelling at Fred to keep the door closed, Fred yelling at George to stop acting like a bloody lunatic, and furniture being thrown about as the younger twin shoved it aside to get at the rat.

It took Peter Pettigrew exactly fifteen seconds of this chase to realise that the jig was well and truly up, and that the confusion would only last so long. As a rat, he reasoned, he would be stuck in this room until he was either caught and prodded and poked, either as a captive of the curious twins or a prisoner of the Ministry.

He wasn’t actually sure which of those thoughts scared him badly enough to make him transform back into his own body for the first time in almost a decade.

Even though George had actually figured out the fact that the rat was not-a-rat, he still wasn’t quite expecting a balding, squinty eyed wizard in his thirties to suddenly appear on all fours. Fred, who had not been expecting anything of the sort, screamed very, very loudly. And maybe wet himself a tiny bit, but he wasn’t sure. He knew George would never tell, either way.

Peter had no wand, having had to sacrifice it years ago to prove himself dead, but Fred and George were shocked, afraid and eleven years old. He can take them, he decides as he struggles to his feet, knock them out, because no matter what you might think, he had never been the kind of monster to kill children ( _no,_ a sneering voice that sounds a lot like James says in his mind, _no, you’re just an accomplice to the murder of children)_ and then he’ll turn back into a rat, stick to the shadows, sneak out of the gates and disappear.

He hadn’t quite counted on a seventh year with a free period slamming the door open at that moment in response to George’s scream. He had also not counted on that seventh year being Bill Weasley, the eldest of the Weasley siblings, whose ears were fine tuned to the screams of his younger brothers at this point, and knew how to differentiate a shocked yell from one of blood curdling fear.

Bill, one of the top Defence students in his year, doesn’t even properly clock the situation beyond a strange, unkempt man being in a room with two of his terrified looking younger brothers, before he fires off a stunner that hits Pettigrew right in the forehead, causing him to crumple to the floor in a heap.

That is not the end of the story, of course not.

There is an inquest, as to how Peter Pettigrew was alive, and a death eater and a traitor, and _why didn’t this come out at his alleged murderer’s trial, Barty?_ and the fact that said alleged murderer had actually been incarcerated in Azkaban _without_ a trial, the whole media circus surrounding that cock up.

Sirius Black’s subsequent release and rehabilitation in the eyes of the wizarding public could, in the end, be traced back to an invention from his schooldays and two troublemakers. He’d say in latter years that James Potter, who had died due to Pettigrew’s betrayal, had got his revenge from beyond the grave. Fred and George were, of course, forced to give the map to Dumbledore (who, after studying it for a few weeks to figure out how to make his own, slipped it back into George’s schoolbag without a word) and Percy got therapy to deal with the fact that his pet rat had in fact been a fully grown man.

Sirius Black, a frequent dinner guest at the Burrow (along with his godson Harry Potter, who develops his first crush on Bill Weasley, the man that took down the man responsible for his parent’s deaths with one spell) pays for it from the undisclosed sum paid to him by the ministry as compensation for his stint in Azkaban. When Molly and Arthur try to argue, he reminds them that it’s not charity if it’s from family.

And they _are_ a family, aren’t they? He accompanies this line with large puppy dog eyes that stop working after about a month, but by then it's too late, because they kind of _are._ (And, if in fifteen years or so Harry will marry Ginny Weasley, Sirius maintains it was only making it official.)

**Author's Note:**

> Please, if you have any ideas for which dumb idea I should fix next, please comment and let me know! Or just, you know, comment anyway. Because I live for feedback.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at: [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com)


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